Vasily Blyukher

Vasily Blyukher (1 December 1889-9 November 1938) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union who fought in World War I, the Russian Civil War, and Soviet-Japanese War.

Biography
Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher was born on 1 December 1889 in Basrchinka, Yaroslavl Governorate, in the Russian Empire (present-day Rybinsky District, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia) to a Russian peasant family. Blyukher's family was given the last name by their landlord after Marshal Gebhard von Blucher of Prussia, a major leader of Prussia during the Napoleonic Wars. He was a factory worker until World War I in 1914, when he joined the Imperial Russian Army. In 1917 he joined the Russian Revolution in Samara and became a Red Guard commissar, putting down Alexander Dutov's White Army uprising. In August-September 1918 he led the South Urals Partisan Army of 10,000 troops in the war against the Czechoslovak Legion, and in November 1920 he defeated Pyotr Wrangel in the Crimea. From 1921 to 1922 he led the Far Eastern Republic's military, and from 1924 to 1927 he was an adviser to the Republic of China. He instructed future People's Republic of China commander Lin Biao and was based at Khabarovsk, and from 1929 to 1930 he fought the Kuomintang over the Chinese Eastern Railroad. In 1935 he was made Marshal of the Soviet Union and fought against the Japanese at the Battle of Lake Khasan.

His importance in the war with Japan spared him from the 1937 start of the Great Purge, and he was among of the Russian generals who tried Mikhail Tukhachevsky for treason. Blyukher was later dismissed from his post for "espionage for Japan" and he was imprisoned without trial. He was tortured to death, and until 1956 he was said to be fighting in China under an alias. However, Nikita Krushchev confirmed his death in 1956.